Clues abound, no answers yet in Powell case

SALT LAKE CITY – A hotel worker in Utah said Tuesday she saw Josh Powell and his boys the morning his wife was reported missing in 2009 – and when the older child asked a question about his mom, they left immediately.

“He didn’t even give the kids time to eat their sweet rolls – each had a small bite on them,” said the worker, Robin Leanne Snyder.

Powell, long suspected in his wife’s disappearance, killed the boys, 7-year-old Charlie and 5-year-old Braden, as well as himself in a gas-fueled fire in a rental home near Puyallup, Wash., this month.

Powell did not leave any obvious hints about what happened to his wife. He had always maintained that she vanished after he took the boys, then 2 and 4, on a midnight camping trip in freezing weather in Utah’s western desert.

Snyder, 53, said she oversaw the free continental breakfast for guests at the Comfort Inn in Sandy, about 16 miles south of where the Powells lived in West Valley City. When she showed up for work at 6:30 that morning, she said, Josh Powell and the boys were there.

“Charlie looked right up at me and he says, ‘Do you know what happened to my mom?’ So I say, ‘No, what happened to your mom?’ ” Snyder said.

She never got an answer. She was called away to fetch coffee for guests, and when she came back, Powell and the boys were gone, she said.

The hotel in Sandy would have been generally on the way back from the area where Josh Powell said he took the boys camping to West Valley City. If Powell was at the hotel at 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 7, 2009, it’s not clear what he might have done for the rest of the day. He didn’t return to his home until 5 p.m. – two hours after friends called him to say that police were at the house and that his wife was missing.

West Valley City police Sgt. Mike Powell, who is not related to the family, declined to discuss any of the recent tips, but said detectives were assigned to evaluate them.

On Sunday, volunteers combed through paper at a Puyallup recycling center and found paperback books with Susan Powell’s name on them and a Utah map. An item described by detectives as a “testament” with Powell’s name on it turned out to be a Mormon religious book.